1st August 1944

[Wapping]

Today, 1st August, marks the 82nd anniversary of the Warsaw uprising and the destruction of the capital city by the Nazis in retaliation. Thousands were murdered or were killed in the fighting, which lasted over two months.

In a war filled with atrocities, this one deserves better recognition, not least as the United Kingdom and its Empire went to war in the first instance over the invasion and subsequent rape of Poland.

 

[Wapping]

There is a very good book on the uprising.





I say it’s a very good book. In fact it’s a terrible book, where the horrors mount, chapter after chapter until everything is destroyed.

 

[Posh Pete]

Not an easy watch but a great movie by Andrzej Wajda.

 

[karlp]

Today, 1st August, marks the 82nd anniversary of the Warsaw uprising and the destruction of the capital city by the Nazis in retaliation. Thousands were murdered or were killed in the fighting, which lasted over two months.

In a war filled with atrocities, this one deserves better recognition, not least as the United Kingdom and its Empire went to war in the first instance over the invasion and subsequent rape of Poland.

and then fucked them over more than once

no recognition for Monte Casino
sold out to the Russians

 

[Wapping]

no recognition for Monte Casino

The battle for the strategic mountain top of Monte Casino, was indeed bloody and prolonged. However, it was ‘just’ a battle amongst hundreds if not thousands of others.

The razing of Warsaw was very different. It was an all but successful attempt to wipe an entire capital city and all of its inhabitants from the face of the earth.

Of course, it’s possible to argue that the American fire bombing of Japanese cities and, to some degree or another, the combined RAF and USAAF efforts to reduce German conurbations to blasted and burnt out wastelands was similar in intent. But they differ from the ‘intimacy’ of the destruction of Warsaw, the cold blooded mass murder of its civilian inhabitants - shot or blown up en mass - and the stated intent of wiping out the capital (and as such a nation per-se) forever.

That we, UK plc, treated the Poles abysmally after the war and were obliged to dance to Russian and American tunes, is not in dispute. That it reflects our reduced global power status, is undoubtedly true, too.